Guilt

Last Friday at my daughter’s school it was ‘hat day’. The PTA organizes this and, on most Fridays, they have some kind of theme to promote school spirit. Most of the time the kids just wear blue, the school color, but other times it will be pajama day, crazy sock day and other things. They posted the list of the next 7 or 8 Fridays on social media so people would know. I saw it and told my daughter what was coming up. Two weeks ago, she wore blue and last Wednesday we talked about hat day coming up so we knew about it. Until Friday came and I completely forgot. She did too, but she’s 7 and I’m the Mom so of course it’s on me. I realized I forgot when I got back into the house after putting her on the bus and I went on my phone and there it was, the first post on my Instagram feed and all I could do was sit there and yell ‘FUCK!!!’.

I couldn’t believe I forgot. We had just talked about it, maybe even the night before. And I sat there trying to figure out how it slipped my mind. And I could probably give a list of reasons but tops on that list would be my brain is fried and I have no idea what day it is from one day to the next. There was probably at least a minute or two that morning where I had no idea that it was even Friday. That’s the state of mush my brain is in, but of course the reasons or excuses I could come up with didn’t matter, I forgot and my daughter was going to school hatless, and I felt like a terrible mother.

When my husband called, I told him what happened and as usual he had his laid-back attitude and said ‘it’s no big deal, it happens. I’m sure she won’t be the only one, she’ll be fine’, which is infuriating sometimes because things that I see as huge are so minor to him, and I know he’s right, and I really wish I could be that relaxed about things, but that’s another story. As I vented to him and put myself down as being a shit mother and whatever other insults I could think of, which he absolutely hates that I do, I could feel the tears start to well in my eyes. I hung up the phone and cried. And I pictured my daughter in school being the only one without a hat, feeling left out or embarrassed, possibly crying herself, and my whole mind and body filled up with a huge amount of guilt. I felt guilty for forgetting, guilty for not being a better mom, guilty for letting the world around me totally mess with my head. Guilty for everything. And I wondered, does it ever stop? Do we ever not have Mom guilt? Or does it just start the day our child is born and go on until the day we die??

I told my husband he didn’t understand because he doesn’t feel bad about things the way I do and he doesn’t feel guilty about the things he does or doesn’t do and he said I was wrong. And maybe I am because I’m sure Dads feel guilty too sometimes but it’s nowhere near the level of what Moms go through. That’s just a fact. And as I’ve been thinking about this over the past few days, I’ve come to realize that I don’t think it starts the day we become Moms, it starts the day we are born as females. I’m sure plenty of women without children feel guilt about just as many things that have nothing to do with kids. So, is it really something we are born with? We’re girls so we automatically feel bad or guilty all of our lives?

I think the words I have said most in my life aren’t ‘I love you’, they’re ‘I’m sorry’. And that has definitely been true over the past few years. I find myself apologizing all of the time, and most of the time I do it because I want to, not because I have to, but that’s not always the case. As women, we apologize for not doing enough. We apologize for not being able to go to a party we’re invited to, or out with our friends. We apologize for burning dinner. We apologize for not making dinner in the first place. We’re sorry for being tired, or moody, or late, or forgetful, or for anything and everything in between. And basically, what it really comes down to, is that we’re apologizing for being human. We’re apologizing for things everyone else does to us. We’re apologizing for all of the ‘I’m sorry’s’ we never get. We put this pressure on ourselves that we have to do it right all of the time, no matter what. It’s exhausting, it’s unhealthy and it’s unrealistic. But we do it anyway. And we carry the guilt around on our backs and it just weighs us down more and more each day.

And I have to wonder, who started this shit? What female was the one to say this is how it has to be? And more importantly, why hasn’t anyone put a stop to it? I’m not sure we can stop it, it’s just who we are, it’s in our DNA. Or maybe it’s not, and that’s the problem. Females have X, X while males have X, Y. We don’t have our Y which may be the reason we always question ourselves. Why did I do that? Why didn’t I do this instead? Why can’t I be better? Why am I unhappy? Why, why, why? Always questioning everything we do, every step we take, every little thing about ourselves. Forever in search of our ‘why’. That’s just the way of the world, I guess. It’s never going to end, but we can at least make it better. We can give ourselves a break sometimes, we can just let things go, which is the hardest thing to do. For me, I might be a hopeless case, but I’ll be damned if my daughter grows up the same way. Maybe I can’t change myself so easily, but I can make sure she doesn’t become like me. She will know she is better than that.

When she got off the bus on Friday, I was prepared to feel her wrath and hear how I screwed up. I asked how her day was and she said it was good. I said ‘I’m sorry I forgot hat day’. She said, ‘it’s ok, Mom. I was sad at first but most of the other kids forgot too so not many kids had hats on’. And that was it, crisis averted. I laughed because at that point what else was there to do? I felt bad all day and it was forgotten about in less than a minute. I wrote down the next 6 Friday themes on the calendar so I’m prepared. This Friday is wear blue, next Friday is sunglasses day. It’s right there for me to see, I just have to remember to look at the calendar. And if I forget, I’ll have my apology all ready for when she gets home.